Proscenium [Dumb Box 07]

This box is like a practically naked starlet, and to my mind, oh-so-pretty.

note: I destroyed this box in spring of 2013.

Don't Look Back [Dumb Box 6]

I shaped these boxes 'dumb' on purpose; like a mannequin, they would mean nothing until an image was laid upon them.  This one required a couple pounds of salt to fell fully "dressed."

The Rest Is Noise [Dumb Box 05]

There's so much noise in New York, almost everywhere, that it begins to work like silence.
This box has cardboard inserts, like fingers in the ears.  Not meant to be removed.  But possible.

Trust Me [Dumb Box 04]

I've been working in our studio on 36th Street, between 7th and 8th Avenues, the Garment District, and photographers have been running around the neighborhood because of Fashion Week.  They take pictures of everyone arriving for the shows, and though I try to get it, most of them look no more fashionable than the rest of us, but perhaps that's the style now: gods should look like mortals.

(Collection: Lori Barra and Nico Frias)

Equator [Dumb Box 03]

These are the first objects created in our new studio in New York.  A couple days ago I turned 69 and I am very much aware how fortunate I am to be in a new city at this time in my life.  It feels like I’m in the right place for me at the right time, not a bad way to feel at this age.  Or any, for that matter.

 

Begins Ends Each Moment [Dumb Box 02]

I think of these objects as projectors, not for slides/transparencies, but for the ego; or as reliquaries of a religion that doesn't believe in the existence of the body.  They're measure about 6" x 10" x 6", and they're plain: birch wood with gesso and acrylic.  This one has cardboard inserts.

 

I Am Big Heaven 2012 [Dumb Box 01]

Back in 1966 I got my first apartment, it was in San Francisco and in it I had nothing but a bed, a chair and a table.  I made cardboard sculptures back then, very simple ones, on which I mounted type and images.  Now that we’ve just moved into a temporary apartment in New York, I decided to go back to those cardboard boxes, but drop the images and construct them out of wood.  I'm working on a dozen of them; this is the first.